When my spouse, Penny, and I have been simply beginning out within the early 1980s, like many younger couples, we struggled to make ends meet.

I used to be working full-time with people who have been dealing with life-changing illness and incapacity on an annual wage of lower than $9,000. When Penny was an expectant mom, we relied upon assist from our households and in addition from WIC — the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

WIC is a short-term intervention program designed to assist pregnant ladies and their youngsters meet healthy dietary wants. After exhausting our private assets and assistance from our households, WIC really helped.

We by no means left a member of the family’s home with no small care package deal or leftovers from a meal. We have been lucky to have WIC to make sure Penny had a healthy pregnancy with our firstborn son, Parker.

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I do know what it’s wish to wrestle. I typically say the worst factor about dwelling in a small city is that everyone is aware of your corporation. However, when everyone really is aware of your corporation, it is easy to determine neighbors in want.

In robust occasions, we assist our neighbors. That is the guts of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

SNAP, previously often known as food stamps, offers a security internet to low-income households to assist guarantee nobody in America goes hungry when occasions get robust. As chairman of the House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Nutrition, I consider it is very important protect the integrity of this system to make sure America has that security internet.

Despite declining ranges of want because the Great Recession, almost 17 % of U.S. households with youngsters nonetheless stay food insecure. As a father or mother, there isn’t any worse feeling than witnessing your youngster go with out one thing as primary as food. Even although fewer households are collaborating in this system, we now have an ethical obligation to see that youngsters on this nation don’t go hungry.

That’s why since 2015 the Nutrition Subcommittee has hosted 21 hearings on SNAP and acquired testimony from greater than 80 witnesses on easy methods to enhance this system and work to finish starvation in America.

I firmly consider because the House of Representatives writes a brand new farm invoice, we will promote insurance policies to get us nearer to this objective.

In Fiscal Year 2017, SNAP offered greater than 42 million Americans with food advantages, in virtually 21 million households. Nearly two-thirds of this system individuals are youngsters, seniors age 60 and older, and the disabled.

Unfortunately, there are able-bodied Americans in this system that will not have the talents essential to discover a family-sustaining job or might have encountered roadblocks to a profession that might put an finish to dwelling paycheck to paycheck.

We need to be sure that SNAP recipients have an opportunity to study new expertise and climb the rungs on the ladder of alternative. I consider this may be achieved by offering states the assets to arm recipients with the tender expertise, certifications, and schooling mandatory to achieve at present’s financial system.

Our proposal expands funding for these life-changing packages by closing loopholes and enhancing alternatives for low-income people. In an effort to make sure this system is serving these really in want, all recipients should meet a primary asset check.

But for the primary time in many years, our invoice modernizes and improves the asset, car and financial savings allowances, that are a part of the general profit eligibility course of. Households with out an aged or disabled member can exclude the primary $7,000 from their asset willpower whereas households with an aged or disabled member can exclude the primary $12,000.

These numbers, elevated from $2,000 and $three,000 respectively, don’t think about issues like a person’s house or private property. Additionally, for the primary time, a further $2,000 held in a financial savings account can also be excluded. This encourages financial savings and helps weak households have a further useful resource within the occasion of an emergency.

Lastly, this invoice excludes the primary $12,000 of a car — up from $four,650 — furthering the purpose that a family shouldn’t be penalized for having a dependable car to get to appointments or employment.

Current regulation consists of work necessities for SNAP recipients, nevertheless they’re obscure and unenforceable, and include quite a few exemptions for work-capable people that states have been fast to waive.

This invoice is about enhancing alternatives for people who’ve been marginalized by a scarcity of schooling or employment prospects. By doing this, SNAP will present speedy food assistance within the short-term, whereas additionally empowering people to take a maintain of their futures in hopes of lifting themselves out of poverty.

Despite the criticism of some, exemptions will stay in place for almost 80 % of SNAP recipients, together with our most weak: youngsters, seniors, and the disabled. Detractors could also be desperate to mischaracterize these efforts, however what we all know is you could’t feed your method out of poverty.

As a father whose younger household benefited from WIC, I’m an instance — not the exception — that there are numerous pathways to success in life.

Sometimes we’d like the security internet to assist us by way of troublesome occasions and get again on our ft.

The financial system is on the uptick, unemployment is at its lowest in almost 20 years, and we’ve got an excellent alternative to basically change the best way we help Americans to grab alternative and upward mobility. I sit up for getting this executed.

(U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Republican, represents Pennsylvania’s fifth Congressional District. He is vice chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. This piece first appeared on PennLive.)